I was talking about the stock hit they just took for manipulation of the M:tG market. I understand that they’re a for-profit company, but WotC has legit been scamming customers for years.
I am all for giving Wizards flack (particularly for Magic - I am less concerned with their present monetisation systems D&D), but I think it is important to focus the flack where deserved, and not on a report that dinged Wizards for one of the few places they were not greedy with Magic.
I sincerely doubt there was anything altruistic regarding WotC re-releasing those cards. They did it because they knew they could push more cardboard crack that way. And a lot of what you said about M:tG, namely “overly aggressive release periods, trying to appeal to so many different types of player it makes the actual releases themselves a mess, increasingly worse quality control….” I see all of that happening with D&D lately too.
It is important to note that I did not say altruistic--I said not greedy. Naturally there are financial decisions behind their decision to spend reprint equity (the amount of expected value for reprinting a card), including the immediate goal of moving product and the long-term goal of reducing a barrier to entry for new players/customers. However, just because something is financially motivated and not for altruistic reasons, that does not make it "greedy". Greed requires an element of excess at the expense of others; it is exploitative in a manner that goes beyond making a buck. What the BoA report proposed likely would have been greedy--they wanted Wizards to very, very rarely reprint high-value cards so big box retailers would stockpile product, confident that the product's value would increase over time due to the ever-increasing scarcity of the cards inside. That might have increased profits (though likely less than BoA thought due to big box stores being a smaller portion of Wizards' customer base than they assumed), but would have come at the cost of exploiting players, crossing the line into greed.
I think this is a point one can disagree about when it comes to D&D. Personally, I do not feel exploited by D&D right now. I think having a release every few months is about the right level--it is not like Magic, where we have been in a near-constant state of spoiler season (the advertisement period for a new set where they reveal new cards) for a year or so now, to the point many players are feeling drained of energy just trying to keep up with the new cards they have to remember or consider for their decks. After all, with Magic even if you do not intend to buy product, it is helpful to keep up with what cards are released, since you might see someone else play them--D&D allows the DM to set what content is used, not the rules of the format being played. This year in D&D, we had a pretty manageable release window of 6 new products.
I also have not seen the quality decline folks keep talking about--it is not like Magic where you can buy a $40.00 set of cards from Wizards and they show up curled like a Pringle. Of the books we got this year, MMM was a great product that should be really helpful to new players, I have heard good things about the new Starter Set and it being an improvement on its predecessor. I have heard good reviews of Netherdeep and Dragonlance. Radiant Citadel is great (huge fan of these Candlekeep style anthologies that can be slid into other campaigns when I am too lazy/busy to DM). Spelljammer is the only one I have heard bad things about, and one product out of six being mediocre is still a pretty good ratio for success. And if you go back a year further I would say Fizban's, Van Richten's, Strixhaven, and Candlekeep are all great, and have heard good things about Witchlight.
Others might disagree, but I have been pretty satisfied with the current D&D quality and, with a release only every 2 months on average, am certainly not feeling overwhelmed or that the releases are too aggressive. Additionally, it should be noted that the current move toward online product gives D&D a certain a la carte element to purchases, so players never need to pay for more than they are going to use. Not to mention the content sharing rules are pretty generous. Notably, while Wizards only aquired Beyond recently, they would have been involved in both those decisions, since it was instrumental to how Beyond utilized their license of D&D product) Beyond is far more financially beneficial to the player than "buy a physical book for the one thing you need" (though, admittedly, it is not as player-beneficial as getting all content with a monthly subscription and not purchasing rulebooks like 4e was--but 4e might have been sold differently if it were successful as an edition).
So, for now, I am fine with where D&D is at--sure, it is making money and clearly focused on making money (as is required by any publicly traded company), but I feel they are doing so in a way that has not hurt the health of the game or been overly discouraging to any but the "Wizards is always wrong" crowd that has been decrying Wizards' actions for decades.
Plus 5e's release pace has been glacierly slow compared to every past edition, especially 3.x - the most successful edition until 5e. Used to be a month with only 1 product release was cause to worry and speculate. LOL!
Frequency doesn't matter too much as to whether they're being scammy or whatever. So long as its additive (ie it's not replacing recently published stuff), it's optional (you're not pressured to buy it just to keep the game "up to date" and on a par with everyone else) and the quality doesn't suffer, then the more, the better. Release a new adventure every week and I'd love it. Heck, every day. I love choice, and it's rarely a bad thing.
However, the problem is the caveat about quality. When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get? I'm not sure I remember one. I've seen a few that people got excited about...and were poorly executed. Most of the ones that I think pretty good came out before I started playing - bar FToD. It does feel like they're just throwing stuff out there rather than providing quality goods that I can trust. That's not exactly the highest standard of integrity.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get?
Define "player base". Because somebody on these forums, and on the wider internet in general, is always going to complain about every release for one reason or another
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Frequency doesn't matter too much as to whether they're being scammy or whatever. So long as its additive (ie it's not replacing recently published stuff), it's optional (you're not pressured to buy it just to keep the game "up to date" and on a par with everyone else) and the quality doesn't suffer, then the more, the better. Release a new adventure every week and I'd love it. Heck, every day. I love choice, and it's rarely a bad thing.
However, the problem is the caveat about quality. When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get? I'm not sure I remember one. I've seen a few that people got excited about...and were poorly executed. Most of the ones that I think pretty good came out before I started playing - bar FToD. It does feel like they're just throwing stuff out there rather than providing quality goods that I can trust. That's not exactly the highest standard of integrity.
I was excited about Radiant Citadel and I wasn't disappointed. It was one of the few i wanted to buy for myself rather than just rely on my DM's collection.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get?
Define "player base". Because somebody on these forums, and on the wider internet in general, is always going to complain about every release for one reason or another
I and a number of others I know were really excited about Radiant Citadel - the smaller mini-campaigns are really great for DMs since you can slide them into a homebrew campaign with relative ease if you are short on ideas or busy. I also was excited to see non-Western perspectives added to D&D, since they added new monsters and such that worked well when exploring a culturally and racially dynamic map. I think it delivered pretty well on what it set out to do and on my expectations and was probably my favourite release of the year.
When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get?
Define "player base". Because somebody on these forums, and on the wider internet in general, is always going to complain about every release for one reason or another
Exactly! Sample bias is a real problem especially with all of our heavily curated internet experiences. "The bubble of what I see on the internet" never, ever necessarily equates to the widespread reality beyond that bubble, but since it's all that we see people constantly make that sample bias mistake. All. The. Time.
Like Caerwyn, in my bubble of the internet, Spelljammer was the only release where there was widespread disappointment and that was after the release. People in my bubble have been enthusiastic about all of the releases recently (Radiant Citadel & Spelljammer topping the anticipation list), and quite happy with all of them except Spelljammer. But I also wouldn't presume that my bubble of the internet represents anything other than my bubble of the internet - especially when it comes to something as highly subjective as to whether a book is good or not.
Plus 5e's release pace has been glacierly slow compared to every past edition, especially 3.x - the most successful edition until 5e. Used to be a month with only 1 product release was cause to worry and speculate. LOL!
I’d seen somewhere wizards did some market research and found that most people would really only buy 4 books. Not per year, but over the entire life cycle of an edition. (Hard to believe for us D&D obsessed forum-dwellers, I know.) It really made them realize that churning out splat books wasn’t quite as valuable as they’d thought, and that’s why we have this new, much slower release schedule. This is, like, 3rd-hand information, so take it with a big grain of salt. But it would go a long way to explaining the publishing schedule for this edition.
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
This is going to ruffle some feathers but so be it. Our hobby has been slowly but surely twisted and converted into something that is very, very different from the Ad&d I used to play and love.
I signed up to D&D Beyond, for what? To find groups to play in? Well there's other places that don't charge a subscription to have a forum to do that.
I tried the homebrew stuff, and it's always a little, rabbit-hole to buy some pdf!
And the idea of playing online was neat. But it has now been bastardised into a thing for people to constantly pay money, for what? New maps? New tokens?
Folks, this game is at its best when you don't have any external crap! All you need is some funny shaped dice, some graph paper, maybe some hex, and some players who are invested in their characters, and how THEY imagine them. Not some fake mini which now has the player thinking his character looks like that piece of crap. and then when you finally get players, most of the game is assing around with moving shitty tokens on a shitty looking fake terrain map, or a town map. It totally ruins something which is the holy grail of all role-playing and a necessity for a great game session, and it's one word...
verisimilitude
Just you core books and that. Voice chat if online. There. WotC are just money grabbing leeches that have made a very nice looking display. But you all know what's coming next right?
Guys this a scam that will ruin our game, and leech money from us. Flame me all you want, but remember this post in a couple of years!
VTTs have been around for years. You can still play the game physically; hell, I prefer rolling real dice and scratching hastily-scribbled notes down onto a scrap of paper behind my flimsy-ass DM screen, while I flip to the relevant page in the adventure module, than playing virtually. But virtual tools and resources have made the game immensely more accessible and observably allowed the recent boom in D&D's popularity.
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I listened to the entire Investor's Fireside, where the c-suite talked about MtG, but did dive into D&D near the end.
Anyone who listened to the actual words stated by the c-suite will have their spidey sense going crazy. The terms "under-monetised" and "recurrent charging" and the concept that 80% of the consumer base barely pay anything (the c-suite stated 20% of the base is DM's, who do the vast majority of the spending) all scream one thing: Hasbro/wotc expects everyone to pay more, a lot more.
And before anyone says the above statement is rumour, no, I listened to it, and Williams and Cocks used those words.
The real question is now how wotc wipes out all support for 5e on this site when 6e is available, likely 18 months from now. That and how wotc handles other VTT providers, who will be competition once wotc gets its VTT functional (don't bet on it being ready when 6e is released). Nerd Immersion did a You Tube video a few days ago and he flatly stated that wotc is now reaching out to 3rd party 5e content creators to discuss future relationships...once the 3rd party content provider signs an NDA.....
There is zero chance that wotc wants 5e around in any form as competition for 6e. We have seen that with previous editions of D&D, and we have seen that in other industries (New Coke anyone?). wotc can't create "recurrent charging" within groups that buy the hard copies and play with just whatever is inside those copies. But they most certainly can up the ante on subscriptions for online players that use this portal, more than they do already.
This post valid case study in why listening and comprehending are different. Yes, to a layperson there were a lot of really scary sounding words about monetising things. But this was not a presentation for laypeople - it was a presentation for investors with the goal of showing that there was revenue growth potential. And, if you were comprehending, you’ll note they did not say they were going to “expect” everyone to pay more - they were instead going to try and create products which the other 80% might be interested in. A more diverse set of products appealing to players who currently are not having their perspective catered to is not a bad thing - that’s just a sensible way to grow your business without putting increasing amounts of weight on the 20% who pay.
But, hey, leave it to someone on the internet (with an account less than a day old and no real posting history) to post a long rant complaining about Wizards acknowledging “we want to keep growing, but we don’t want to grow in a way that puts too much of a burden on any one type of player.”
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I listened to the entire Investor's Fireside, where the c-suite talked about MtG, but did dive into D&D near the end.
Anyone who listened to the actual words stated by the c-suite will have their spidey sense going crazy. The terms "under-monetised" and "recurrent charging" and the concept that 80% of the consumer base barely pay anything (the c-suite stated 20% of the base is DM's, who do the vast majority of the spending) all scream one thing: Hasbro/wotc expects everyone to pay more, a lot more.
And before anyone says the above statement is rumour, no, I listened to it, and Williams and Cocks used those words.
The real question is now how wotc wipes out all support for 5e on this site when 6e is available, likely 18 months from now. That and how wotc handles other VTT providers, who will be competition once wotc gets its VTT functional (don't bet on it being ready when 6e is released). Nerd Immersion did a You Tube video a few days ago and he flatly stated that wotc is now reaching out to 3rd party 5e content creators to discuss future relationships...once the 3rd party content provider signs an NDA.....
There is zero chance that wotc wants 5e around in any form as competition for 6e. We have seen that with previous editions of D&D, and we have seen that in other industries (New Coke anyone?). wotc can't create "recurrent charging" within groups that buy the hard copies and play with just whatever is inside those copies. But they most certainly can up the ante on subscriptions for online players that use this portal, more than they do already.
This post valid case study in why listening and comprehending are different. Yes, to a layperson there were a lot of really scary sounding words about monetising things. But this was not a presentation for laypeople - it was a presentation for investors with the goal of showing that there was revenue growth potential. And, if you were comprehending, you’ll note they did not say they were going to “expect” everyone to pay more - they were instead going to try and create products which the other 80% might be interested in. A more diverse set of products appealing to players who currently are not having their perspective catered to is not a bad thing - that’s just a sensible way to grow your business without putting increasing amounts of weight on the 20% who pay.
But, hey, leave it to someone on the internet (with an account less than a day old and no real posting history) to post a long rant complaining about Wizards acknowledging “we want to keep growing, but we don’t want to grow in a way that puts too much of a burden on any one type of player.”
I comprehend just fine, thanks.
Then you are selectively ignoring many other things mentioned in that interview. Namely that the players vs DM spending was directly in reference to the earlier discussion of M:tG customer segments and that they had to cater product offerings to more than a single customer segment and offer more products the other want.
You also missed that the under-monetized comment everyone is milking to support their pet theories was also elaborated on discussing merchandising including the anecdote about how when he used to tell people he worked for WotC or on M:tG no one knew what he was talking about. But if he mentioned D&D there was 100% recognition and that’s powerful mainstream brand recognition that they haven’t been exploring as much as they should. Things like the movie and video game (again specifically mentioned but people with an axe to grind keep ignoring) are ways to correct that under-monetization. In fact the vast majority of their discussion of D&D was about licensing.
You also missed when they said growth would be from 3 specifically stated areas - new players, returning lapsed players, and licensing and NOT getting existing players to pay more for what they already have.
So if you did comprehend what they were saying you are selectively ignoring 80% of what they said. Why is that?
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I mean yeah, capitalism sucks. I don't think that was your point though
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I mean yeah, capitalism sucks. I don't think that was your point though
You’re right. My point was that WotC engages in predatory capitalism.
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I mean yeah, capitalism sucks. I don't think that was your point though
You’re right. My point was that WotC engages in predatory capitalism.
Unless you're defining all capitalism as "predatory capitalism" they, in fact, do not
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
I mean yeah, capitalism sucks. I don't think that was your point though
You’re right. My point was that WotC engages in predatory capitalism.
Unless you're defining all capitalism as "predatory capitalism" they, in fact, do not
If you’re making commercial content, relatively little is going to change for most creators. For most of you who are selling custom content, here are the new things you’ll need to do:
Accept the license terms and let us know what you’re offering for sale
Report OGL-related revenue annually (if you make more than $50,000 in a year)
Include a Creator Product badge on your work
When we roll out OGL 1.1, we will also provide explanatory videos, FAQs, and a web portal for registration to make navigating these requirements as easy and intuitive as possible. We’ll also have help available to creators to navigate the new process.
The issue is that Wizards owns/operates/produces Magic: the Gathering, which is an incredibly predatory property well known for being deeply and unshakably anti-consumer. Wizards does M:tG aficionados dirty, basically on the weekly, and they make an egregious shit-ton of money doing it.
Why would a company that has shown itself to be ten thousand percent enthusiastically down for being Evil so long as Evil is profitable show any more regard for consumers of D&D than it historically has for consumers of M:tG?
The investor call is being overblown, yes. Investors want D&D movies, games, TV shows, T-shirts, breakfast cereal, novelty branded toilet paper – what they have is a world-recognized, household-name brand, which is the sort of thing Money People have wet dreams about. Money People would trade their children to Asmodeus with a song and a smile for the sort of brand recognition D&D has, because then they can put “D&D!” on literally any object and make money selling that object. That is what the investor call meant by “undermonetized” – D&D is not currently being sold as literally-any-object, and its investors want that changed. “Recurrent spending” doesn’t have to mean EA-style MTX nonsense, it can just mean they want people to buy new D&D-branded paper plates every month. See: Harry Potter, and how you can find Harry Potter-branded literally anything .
But to those saying it’s all a nothingburger, I remind you once again that Magic: the Gathering exists, and Wizards has been bleeding M:tG fans drier than Mars for decades and making absolutely no effort to hide their predatory gambling-based monetization scheme for that game. If you don’t think Wizards is capable of being Saturday morning cartoon level Evil in the pursuit of an extra dollar, you’re loony enough to star next to an animated rabbit. Some level of wariness is always in order with this company.
If you’re making commercial content, relatively little is going to change for most creators. For most of you who are selling custom content, here are the new things you’ll need to do:
Accept the license terms and let us know what you’re offering for sale
Report OGL-related revenue annually (if you make more than $50,000 in a year)
Include a Creator Product badge on your work
When we roll out OGL 1.1, we will also provide explanatory videos, FAQs, and a web portal for registration to make navigating these requirements as easy and intuitive as possible. We’ll also have help available to creators to navigate the new process.
So, from what I've read on the newest DDB article, WotC wants to know how much money one earns from sold homebrew content, and if it exceeds a certain value, they'll charge you for royalties? That seems... questionable to say the least. At least compared to the current OGL.
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It is important to note that I did not say altruistic--I said not greedy. Naturally there are financial decisions behind their decision to spend reprint equity (the amount of expected value for reprinting a card), including the immediate goal of moving product and the long-term goal of reducing a barrier to entry for new players/customers. However, just because something is financially motivated and not for altruistic reasons, that does not make it "greedy". Greed requires an element of excess at the expense of others; it is exploitative in a manner that goes beyond making a buck. What the BoA report proposed likely would have been greedy--they wanted Wizards to very, very rarely reprint high-value cards so big box retailers would stockpile product, confident that the product's value would increase over time due to the ever-increasing scarcity of the cards inside. That might have increased profits (though likely less than BoA thought due to big box stores being a smaller portion of Wizards' customer base than they assumed), but would have come at the cost of exploiting players, crossing the line into greed.
I think this is a point one can disagree about when it comes to D&D. Personally, I do not feel exploited by D&D right now. I think having a release every few months is about the right level--it is not like Magic, where we have been in a near-constant state of spoiler season (the advertisement period for a new set where they reveal new cards) for a year or so now, to the point many players are feeling drained of energy just trying to keep up with the new cards they have to remember or consider for their decks. After all, with Magic even if you do not intend to buy product, it is helpful to keep up with what cards are released, since you might see someone else play them--D&D allows the DM to set what content is used, not the rules of the format being played. This year in D&D, we had a pretty manageable release window of 6 new products.
I also have not seen the quality decline folks keep talking about--it is not like Magic where you can buy a $40.00 set of cards from Wizards and they show up curled like a Pringle. Of the books we got this year, MMM was a great product that should be really helpful to new players, I have heard good things about the new Starter Set and it being an improvement on its predecessor. I have heard good reviews of Netherdeep and Dragonlance. Radiant Citadel is great (huge fan of these Candlekeep style anthologies that can be slid into other campaigns when I am too lazy/busy to DM). Spelljammer is the only one I have heard bad things about, and one product out of six being mediocre is still a pretty good ratio for success. And if you go back a year further I would say Fizban's, Van Richten's, Strixhaven, and Candlekeep are all great, and have heard good things about Witchlight.
Others might disagree, but I have been pretty satisfied with the current D&D quality and, with a release only every 2 months on average, am certainly not feeling overwhelmed or that the releases are too aggressive. Additionally, it should be noted that the current move toward online product gives D&D a certain a la carte element to purchases, so players never need to pay for more than they are going to use. Not to mention the content sharing rules are pretty generous. Notably, while Wizards only aquired Beyond recently, they would have been involved in both those decisions, since it was instrumental to how Beyond utilized their license of D&D product) Beyond is far more financially beneficial to the player than "buy a physical book for the one thing you need" (though, admittedly, it is not as player-beneficial as getting all content with a monthly subscription and not purchasing rulebooks like 4e was--but 4e might have been sold differently if it were successful as an edition).
So, for now, I am fine with where D&D is at--sure, it is making money and clearly focused on making money (as is required by any publicly traded company), but I feel they are doing so in a way that has not hurt the health of the game or been overly discouraging to any but the "Wizards is always wrong" crowd that has been decrying Wizards' actions for decades.
Plus 5e's release pace has been glacierly slow compared to every past edition, especially 3.x - the most successful edition until 5e. Used to be a month with only 1 product release was cause to worry and speculate. LOL!
Frequency doesn't matter too much as to whether they're being scammy or whatever. So long as its additive (ie it's not replacing recently published stuff), it's optional (you're not pressured to buy it just to keep the game "up to date" and on a par with everyone else) and the quality doesn't suffer, then the more, the better. Release a new adventure every week and I'd love it. Heck, every day. I love choice, and it's rarely a bad thing.
However, the problem is the caveat about quality. When's the last time we'd had a release that the player base was enthusiastic about and happy to get? I'm not sure I remember one. I've seen a few that people got excited about...and were poorly executed. Most of the ones that I think pretty good came out before I started playing - bar FToD. It does feel like they're just throwing stuff out there rather than providing quality goods that I can trust. That's not exactly the highest standard of integrity.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Define "player base". Because somebody on these forums, and on the wider internet in general, is always going to complain about every release for one reason or another
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I was excited about Radiant Citadel and I wasn't disappointed. It was one of the few i wanted to buy for myself rather than just rely on my DM's collection.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I and a number of others I know were really excited about Radiant Citadel - the smaller mini-campaigns are really great for DMs since you can slide them into a homebrew campaign with relative ease if you are short on ideas or busy. I also was excited to see non-Western perspectives added to D&D, since they added new monsters and such that worked well when exploring a culturally and racially dynamic map. I think it delivered pretty well on what it set out to do and on my expectations and was probably my favourite release of the year.
Exactly! Sample bias is a real problem especially with all of our heavily curated internet experiences. "The bubble of what I see on the internet" never, ever necessarily equates to the widespread reality beyond that bubble, but since it's all that we see people constantly make that sample bias mistake. All. The. Time.
Like Caerwyn, in my bubble of the internet, Spelljammer was the only release where there was widespread disappointment and that was after the release. People in my bubble have been enthusiastic about all of the releases recently (Radiant Citadel & Spelljammer topping the anticipation list), and quite happy with all of them except Spelljammer. But I also wouldn't presume that my bubble of the internet represents anything other than my bubble of the internet - especially when it comes to something as highly subjective as to whether a book is good or not.
I’d seen somewhere wizards did some market research and found that most people would really only buy 4 books. Not per year, but over the entire life cycle of an edition. (Hard to believe for us D&D obsessed forum-dwellers, I know.) It really made them realize that churning out splat books wasn’t quite as valuable as they’d thought, and that’s why we have this new, much slower release schedule. This is, like, 3rd-hand information, so take it with a big grain of salt. But it would go a long way to explaining the publishing schedule for this edition.
Hey, all I said was that WotC is in fact a company of money grubbing leeches, and to some extent or another everyone who’s arguing with me actually agrees that they are. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve proven my point.
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VTTs have been around for years. You can still play the game physically; hell, I prefer rolling real dice and scratching hastily-scribbled notes down onto a scrap of paper behind my flimsy-ass DM screen, while I flip to the relevant page in the adventure module, than playing virtually. But virtual tools and resources have made the game immensely more accessible and observably allowed the recent boom in D&D's popularity.
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This post valid case study in why listening and comprehending are different. Yes, to a layperson there were a lot of really scary sounding words about monetising things. But this was not a presentation for laypeople - it was a presentation for investors with the goal of showing that there was revenue growth potential. And, if you were comprehending, you’ll note they did not say they were going to “expect” everyone to pay more - they were instead going to try and create products which the other 80% might be interested in. A more diverse set of products appealing to players who currently are not having their perspective catered to is not a bad thing - that’s just a sensible way to grow your business without putting increasing amounts of weight on the 20% who pay.
But, hey, leave it to someone on the internet (with an account less than a day old and no real posting history) to post a long rant complaining about Wizards acknowledging “we want to keep growing, but we don’t want to grow in a way that puts too much of a burden on any one type of player.”
Then you are selectively ignoring many other things mentioned in that interview. Namely that the players vs DM spending was directly in reference to the earlier discussion of M:tG customer segments and that they had to cater product offerings to more than a single customer segment and offer more products the other want.
You also missed that the under-monetized comment everyone is milking to support their pet theories was also elaborated on discussing merchandising including the anecdote about how when he used to tell people he worked for WotC or on M:tG no one knew what he was talking about. But if he mentioned D&D there was 100% recognition and that’s powerful mainstream brand recognition that they haven’t been exploring as much as they should. Things like the movie and video game (again specifically mentioned but people with an axe to grind keep ignoring) are ways to correct that under-monetization. In fact the vast majority of their discussion of D&D was about licensing.
You also missed when they said growth would be from 3 specifically stated areas - new players, returning lapsed players, and licensing and NOT getting existing players to pay more for what they already have.
So if you did comprehend what they were saying you are selectively ignoring 80% of what they said. Why is that?
I mean yeah, capitalism sucks. I don't think that was your point though
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You’re right. My point was that WotC engages in predatory capitalism.
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Unless you're defining all capitalism as "predatory capitalism" they, in fact, do not
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Whatever you say chief.
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https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d?utm_campaign=DDB&utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_content=8466795323
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This was the part of that that caught my eye:
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The issue is that Wizards owns/operates/produces Magic: the Gathering, which is an incredibly predatory property well known for being deeply and unshakably anti-consumer. Wizards does M:tG aficionados dirty, basically on the weekly, and they make an egregious shit-ton of money doing it.
Why would a company that has shown itself to be ten thousand percent enthusiastically down for being Evil so long as Evil is profitable show any more regard for consumers of D&D than it historically has for consumers of M:tG?
The investor call is being overblown, yes. Investors want D&D movies, games, TV shows, T-shirts, breakfast cereal, novelty branded toilet paper – what they have is a world-recognized, household-name brand, which is the sort of thing Money People have wet dreams about. Money People would trade their children to Asmodeus with a song and a smile for the sort of brand recognition D&D has, because then they can put “D&D!” on literally any object and make money selling that object. That is what the investor call meant by “undermonetized” – D&D is not currently being sold as literally-any-object, and its investors want that changed. “Recurrent spending” doesn’t have to mean EA-style MTX nonsense, it can just mean they want people to buy new D&D-branded paper plates every month. See: Harry Potter, and how you can find Harry Potter-branded literally anything .
But to those saying it’s all a nothingburger, I remind you once again that Magic: the Gathering exists, and Wizards has been bleeding M:tG fans drier than Mars for decades and making absolutely no effort to hide their predatory gambling-based monetization scheme for that game. If you don’t think Wizards is capable of being Saturday morning cartoon level Evil in the pursuit of an extra dollar, you’re loony enough to star next to an animated rabbit. Some level of wariness is always in order with this company.
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So, from what I've read on the newest DDB article, WotC wants to know how much money one earns from sold homebrew content, and if it exceeds a certain value, they'll charge you for royalties? That seems... questionable to say the least. At least compared to the current OGL.
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